Jewelry articles are typically made of different types of precious metals and stones and are held together by mechanical linkages or interconnections. Designers are somewhat limited by these connections, which often cannot be modified after completion of the jewelry article or cannot be modified without extensive work by a jeweler.
Customers often desire personalized jewelry that includes astrological birth stones, names or significant dates and other personally selected or decorative items. Moreover, customers may want their personalized jewelry to have a particular size and/or shape. However, a jeweler is not likely to be able to stock all of the many variations that may be desired by customers, and it is inconvenient for customers to wait for the jeweler to modify an already existing piece of jewelry or to create a new piece of jewelry for the customer using conventional jewelry components.
Furthermore, a customer may purchase a piece of jewelry that meets their needs or desires at one point in time, but which the customer will want to modify or supplement at a later point in time. For example, a customer may purchase a piece of jewelry that initially includes birthstones representing each of their children and, at a point in time after purchasing the jewelry, have another child. Accordingly, the customer may wish to augment the jewelry they already own to include an additional birthstone or other elements representing their new child. In another example, a person may own a piece of jewelry that is originally intended to be worn as a pendant on a necklace; however, the customer may want to modify a size and/or shape of the jewelry so that it may be worn as a different article of jewelry, e.g., an earring. In still another example, a person may own a piece of jewelry that they wish to frequently modify. For example, the person may wish to have a jeweler be able to easily swap out red gem stones for green or blue gem stones in order to change the jewelry for different occasions.
Conventional jewelry cannot be easily modified or augmented, and even if such modification or augmentation can be performed by a jeweler it is often time intensive and expensive. Accordingly, there exists a need for a jewelry system that includes components that are easily combinable to create new jewelry articles which are easily modifiable after their creation by persons who are not trained jewelers.